for the Better: A Story of El Barrio (1993), and A Matter of Pride and Other Stories
(1997).
Pat Mora (1942– )
Chicana poet, essayist, and children’s book author whose works include Chants
(1984), Borders (1986), Communion (1991), Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the
Middle (1993), Agua Santa/Holy Water (1995), House of Houses (1997), and Aunt
Carmen’s Book of Practical Saints (1997).
Cherríe Moraga (1952– )
Chicana playwright, poet, and essayist whose writings include The Last Genera-
tion: Poetry and Prose (1993) and Heroes and Saints and Other Plays (1994).
Bharati Mukherjee (1940– )
Fiction writer born into a Bengali Brahmin family in Calcutta. Her novels include
The Tiger’s Daughter (1972), Wife (1975), Jasmine (1989), The Holder of the World
(1993), Leave It to Me (1997), Desirable Daughters (2002), and The Tree Bride
(2004). Her other works include the nonfiction Days and Nights in Calcutta (1977;
revised, 1986), coauthored with her husband, Clark Blaise, and The Sorrow and the
Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (1987). Her short stories are
collected in Darkness (1985) and The Middleman (1988).
Naomi Shihab Nye (1952– )
Daughter of a Palestinian father and Anglo American mother. Her poetry col-
lections include Hugging the Jukebox (1982), Red Suitcase (1994), Fuel (1998), 19
Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002), and You and Yours (2005).
Julie Otsuka (1962– )
Japanese American author of When the Emperor Was Divine (2002).
Ishmael Reed (1938– )
Poet, fiction writer, essayist, and playwright best known for coining the term
Neohoodooism to describe an African American aesthetic philosophy. His poems
are collected in New and Collected Poems (1988). His novels include The Free-
lance Pallbearers (1967), Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969), Flight to Canada
(1976), and Japanese by Spring (1993). His nonfiction works are Shrovetide in
Old New Orleans: Essays (1978), God Made Alaska for the Indians: Selected Essays
(1982), Writing Is Fighting: Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper (1988), and Air-
ing Dirty Laundry (1993). He is also the editor of The Before Columbus Founda-
tion Fiction Anthology (1992), The Before Columbus Foundation Poetry (1997), and
Multi-American: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace (1997).
Alberto Ríos (1952– )
Chicano poet whose works include Elk Heads on the Wall (1979), Sleeping on
Fists (1981), Whispering to Fool the Wind (1982), Five Indiscretions (1985), The
Lime Orchard Woman (1988), The Warrington Poems (1989), Teodoro Luna’s Two
Kisses (1990), The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (2002), The Theater of Night
(2005), and The Dangerous Shirt (2009).